Employees' bodies deplore 6th Pay panel recommendations

New Delhi, Mar 25 (UNI) The Confederation of Central Government Employees and Workers today rejected the Sixth Central Pay Commission recommendations and called upon the employees across the country to put up a fight to bring about a ''decent wage settlement''.

It also asked them to organise demonstrations on March 26 to register their protest over the totally unacceptable recommendations of the 6th CPC.

Urging the Government to renegotiate wage revision issue bilaterally, the Confederation criticised the Pay Commission for fixing the minimum wage at Rs 5740, as against its demand for at least Rs ten thousand per month.

Mr K K N Kutty, Secretary General of the Confederation said the employees had demanded fixing of minimum wage as per the norms formulated by the 15th ILC which works out to Rs 10,000 per month.

The computation has been rejected by the Commission on untenable and unsustainable grounds. Had the minimum wage been computed on the basis of the norms laid down by the 5th CPC the percentage increase of the Net National Product over a period of ten years, which the Government had accepted in 1997, the minimum should have been determined at Rs 7400, he said.

''Thus the minimum wage determined by the 6th CPC is even less than what had been recommended by the 5th CPC and accepted by the then Government as fair and reasonable,'' he said in a statement.

He said the first four scales of pay suggested by the 5th CPC for the Group D Employees of the Government have been now removed, so that the existing employees are to be moved to Group C cadres through a process of training.

This means that the unskilled functions in the Governmental sector would be contractorised or outsourced, he pointed out.

The Confederation also opposed the Commission's recommendation to withdraw the benefit of merger of DA granted to the Govternment employees in 2004. The new fixation of pay on the revised scales will be by disregarding this benefit. The proposed 40 per cent fitment benefit will thus be reduced to 28 per cent, when the actual fixation takes place, it said.

The Grade pay concept has been introduced as a prologue to the introduction of a performance-related pay system without specifying any objective yardstick to measure the performance, it said.

The Joint Platform of Action too has criticised the recommendations. JPA president Achintya Sinha said the claim of big hike is a big joke as even the irreducible as recommended by the 15th ILC which comes to Rs 13600 as on January one, 2006 has been denied to the employees.

He said the most dangerous recommendation is that of performance- related incentive.

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